Meet Tim, Oregon host site supervisor

I’d like to introduce my supervisor here in Oregon, Timothy Fisher, manager of the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area.

Tim grew up in the country, in New Hampshire, in a secluded house three miles away from his closest neighbor. Loving to spend time outdoors, picking fruit off trees, his grandmother coined him ” nuts n’ berries”. Wildlife was all around him, making it a big part of his values and it was no surprise that science was his favorite subject in school. But, it wasn’t until he began doing summer internships in high school, that he decide he wanted to have a career in natural resources.

In college he embraced Biology and got involved with the Student Conservation Asociation (SCA) being a park ranger in Utah. Campfire talks, spotting scopes, interpretive center, mapping vegetation, and maintenance were some of his duties that he enjoyed and continued doing through other seasonal jobs with National Park Service.

When Tim got the manager position at Yaquina Head he took a new look at the landscape and wanted make sure the site’s whole story was told. Because there are so many aspects to Yaquina Head, many different kinds of visitors are attracted to the site. This is one of the reasons why Tim decided to get involved with Celebrate Shorebirds Program, because he felt the need to meet all the needs of the site’s audience . ” The site has the lighthouse, tide pools, seals, whales, and so many different types of birds that photographers and birders come see everyday, but there was no staff to focus on them”, Tim explained. So, when the opportunity came up, he was very excited and thought it would be a perfect fit for both parties.

Tim highly believes in being inclusive and he wanted to be such in both the site’s audience targeting and in the large scale of government job participation. He felt that engaging in this program would open doors for the Hispanic community as a whole. In meeting EFTA ‘s goals, he states that Yaquina Head has a high visitation rate and abundant species of birds, so the intern would reach out to a wide community. Not only this, but Tim adds that he highly values partnerships as a form of tying new groups into the community. He wanted to promote the USFW refuges out of the site’s headland where many birds nest, while at the same time mixing up the audience. He feels like the site is the most convenient to have placed the EFTA intern due to its versatility, connection, and training opportunities; and he was right because my experience here has been filled with these three aspects.